by Jerzy Pilch
Not only Mila’s pepper vodka, not only the other liqueurs, but especially the preserves, jams, cucumbers, mushrooms, home-made wine were delicacies. When the summer or the ski seasons came, Roth made out like a bandit on those delicacies. With Mila’s compotes alone he did better business than with the Brannys’ mutton. Which does not mean that he lost money on the meat.
“I don’t lose on anything,” he used to say. “I don’t lose on anything, because I like the Christian verse that says ‘In the beginning was the Word.’ In my tavern I, too, give the word at the beginning. Before the dill soup, I give the word dill soup; before the omelet, I give the word omelet; before the schnitzel, I give the word schnitzel; before the apple torte, I give the word apple torte—but what words they are! How they are written, and on what paper! How they are bound! Garnished with what additional words! Officers’ soup! Omelet á la Lisbon! Emperor’s schnitzel. Apple torte cumulonimbus!”
When, toward the end of the fifties, I found among some old papers a Menu of the Restaurant and Confectionery of Maurycy Roth in Wisła—covered with fossilized dust, but practically without damage—it seemed to me that I had discovered an illuminated Benedictine manuscript or a folio from a biblical papyrus. It was as if my delight was supposed to survive old Roth, murdered in Auschwitz.
Before the pepper vodka was the word pepper vodka, and after the pepper vodka was the word pepper vodka. People were still talking about Mila’s pepper vodka long after the war. And now, as I record this story, pepper vodka from Wierchy is warming the blood of Grandma Zuzanna. She didn’t feel the icy wind during her ride, she was completely numb from the cold, and finally there was a tiny bit of warmth, minimally deeper breaths, a trace of relief. Mila raises the lid of the grand piano. Gustaw had visited them a few weeks before the accident. “‘Sister,’” he said, “for that was how he always addressed me, with strange solemnity and tenderness. I loved him very much, and he loved me too. We were good siblings, even very good, but sometimes when he lost all moderation with that sister of his—sister this, sister that, sister the other thing, when he never said the shortest sentence to me without that sister—you know what I’m talking about, because you often heard it: ‘Gustaw, what time is it?’ ‘Three, sister;’ when he was often as if completely possessed by that sister, I would lose my temper. Was he making a joke or a mockery of me. But not then, on that occasion there wasn’t time to feel offended, on that occasion there wasn’t time for anything, because he was in a hurry. He said that he was going to Ram Mountain for a sacrificial lamb. He was always joking, not always in an appropriate manner. In any case, he was in a terrible hurry, and he dropped by as if for fire, or rather for water, because he called from the threshhold: ‘Sister, I need to drink, sister, I’m horribly dry, sister, I will die of thirst before I return home, sister, save me!’” And she ran down to the cellar for a jar of gooseberry compote—gooseberry, when you need to drink, is the best, slightly tart, invigorating; when she makes it, she never overdoes it with the sugar—and she took the biggest jar she could find, and she returned quickly.
He stood by the grand piano, the lid had been raised, and he had a hand on the keys, and she was certain that he would immediately hammer out a few bars of “When the morning stars are rising…” that was all he could more or less play. But no, he didn’t start to play, he turned around to her and smiled, and in his turn, and smile, there was something light—as if that turn were the beginning of flight. That became fixed in her mind. How wouldn’t it become fixed. That’s how she saw him the last time alive, and now it constantly seems to her that he is standing with his hand raised over the keyboard like some sort of composer, but the poor devil didn’t have an ear worth a plugged nickel, just those disastrous notes of “When the morning…” desperately tapped out. He had probably learned while still in school. Not so much to play, as to find the right keys by memory, and whenever he found himself at the instrument, he immediately began to hammer away. All his life, that one and only melody, and barely at that. Even after death, he couldn’t manage any better. Precisely an hour after his death, she heard someone playing, but, after all, there wasn’t anyone at home; the grand piano was closed and covered with a cloth, but she clearly, very clearly—she wasn’t imagining anything—she hears precisely the first bars pounded out by Gustaw’s hard fingers. He had already been killed, he was already a corpse, he already lay, crushed by the accursed motorcycle, already his wings were folded, already blood was flowing from his head as if from a faucet; but he came once more, wanted to play once more, wanted to pound out the melody, as if he were thanking her for the gooseberry compote.
They embrace and cry, and it is a cry of despair, but also a cry of relief, for since both had heard, since both had received signs, there is no mistake, there is no doubt. Perhaps it was even for this reason that God had taken Gustaw, so that, through hearing, and sometimes later even seeing, He might let it be known that He is. He is. It could have been this way: until now, it had been up and down with their faith. They were too young, too fine looking, and too flighty. Zuza and Mila. It was up and down with them, and especially with their thoughts. But now God had poured His Spirit into them.
Grandma Zuzanna drinks off one more shot of pepper vodka and feels the surge of strength and hope. If the Lord God has given these sorts of signs, that means that there is a Paradise, there are angels, and there is eternal life. And Gustaw will be waiting for her there. Lord Jesus, this is all true! Everything she had learned in Sunday School, in religion, in confirmation classes—this is all the truest truth. She will live well—diligently and piously. She will bring up the little one so that Gustaw will be proud of both of them. And when she should, at some point, die, when she should finally die, what is she saying—finally?—right away, in a moment; life is like a spark, time flies ceaselessly, perhaps even when she falls asleep tonight, she won’t wake up in the morning; it will be right away, it will be right away, as soon as she gets to Heaven, and Gustaw comes out to meet her, smiling so lightly, as Mila said, and they go to some corner where no one will bother them, and she will tell Gustaw everything, every little thing, week by week, day by day, how she raised the little one, how she lived. O Jesus, this is all true! O Jesus, how good that You had the baby start to cry in the back room! How good that on the way to Ram Mountain You sent thirst upon Gustaw and commanded him to drop by Wierchy for gooseberry compote.
And late, very late in the evening, Grandma Zuzanna will return home under heavens so star-strewn it was as if they were covered with snow. The cart goes calmly, the crowns of the trees almost bright, the clatter of the river and the great quiet over the mountains. Fuks pulls up to the gate by memory, a shadow rises from the bench standing before the front entry, runs up to the britzka, and offers her a firm hand, holds her a second longer, presses greedily, knows that he can. God is on his side.
IV
Honor to the Lord on High and thanks be to His grace! No longer can the power and might of Evil bring us doom! Lord Jesus, this is all true! You are! He is! Everything that my Grandpa, Andrzej Pech, taught in Sunday School, religion, and confirmation class—it’s true! God listens to prayers! His prayers were heard. After a year of imploring, his beloved was finally widowed. God has given a sign. No, God hasn’t given a sign. God has given significantly more—God has killed her husband, God has left her with a small child, God has pushed her into his arms.
His arms were ready for the labor of life. They helped her get down from the britzka, then they skillfully unharnessed Fuks, guided him to the stable, and poured out some oats. He returned to the courtyard paved with river stones, but she was no longer there. A yellow light fell from the great window. He glanced up. The edge of the roof under which he was to spend the rest of his life was sharply silhouetted, the heavens were white with stars. He walked all around the house. In her room, which faced the garden, it was already dark. She hadn’t turned on any of the lights, she had felt a surge of exhaustion so terrible, as if she were about to lo
se consciousness. She undressed in the dark, blindly threw her skirt, blouse, and corsette on Gustaw’s bed. She fell asleep with a light heart. Only just before falling asleep did she recall the hand offered to her as she got down from the cart, and then the skillful unharnessing of Fuks. “Why does that postal clerk feel so much at home?” she thought and, fortunately, tumbled into the deep well of sleep. Fortunately, because if she had begun to search for divine signs in this question, she could have gone mad. There is no reason to exaggerate about the divine signs. They are everywhere. In any case, they were there in the question she asked before she fell asleep: “Why does that postal clerk feel so much at home?” He had helped her down from the cart, and a year later she married him.
V
The photo from the second wedding party hangs lower, it is much clearer, and I look at it much more often. There are significantly fewer guests, not even twenty. Grandma Pech is again wearing Silesian dress, Mila again sits on her left with uncanny Pospiszil. They look exactly the same as in the first photo. The strangest of all is the fact that the elder Brannys also look exactly the same. At the wedding party of their son, they look exactly like they do at the wedding party of their widowed daughter-in-law. No change in facial expressions. Between the first and the second photograph, they had lost their first-born son. Now a woman, a stranger to them, who had been his wife, is marrying a postal official, to whom she would bear children under their roof, but you can’t see any of this in their faces. Perhaps because they are just as gloomy at the first wedding party as at the second.
Heavenly musicians play and angelic choirs sing for the groom. He listens to them, dressed in a tailcoat with silk facing. He has crossed his legs in a worldly manner, his shoulder touches Zuzanna’s shoulder, no further miracles are necessary. But in order to honor that miracle, he had Master Potulnik sew him a tailcoat. And he looks out of this world in it. There is no darkness in the background, nor are there evil signs. One dark window foretells how much misfortune is allotted to each.
The background is a white wall, behind which an ocean of objects reaches as high as my shoulders. Piles of prewar newspapers will be like lighthouses, decaying dresses and jackets like shifting sand dunes. Chowderhead the cat will go carefully along the treacherous bank, over which I will fish out from the depths occult novels and forbidden romances. In the middle, snatched up by a vortex, a golden trumpet—which came from who knows where the day after the festivities—circles in a pillar of sunlight. There I would find wooden heads from a puppet theater; there, one day, would come to the surface the skeleton of a leviathan completely plastered with fantastic account books; there I would come upon the menu from Roth’s tavern.
Diving in there took courage, but once you got down below, once you passed the shoal of Austrian coins, the keys to long-forgotten doors, spare parts for all the mechanisms in the world, once you had gone through the darknesses, and finally through the thickest layers strewn with mothballs, as low as possible—then you could see the white outlines of a sunken city: the ruins of marble counter tops, a gigantic scale, an amazing tree stump, an incredible ax, hooks bared and incomplete like the fangs of a mammoth. Even today, it is with the greatest difficulty that I realize that my Atlantis was a prewar butcher shop. Business was still booming during the war. No one ever spoke about it, but supposedly things were going well, even very well. The Germans had taken Roth and his entire family. There was less competition.
The last clients were soldiers of the Red Army. They rode down into Wisła through the Kubalonka Pass, just like the Wehrmacht, except that they came on horses. Grandpa Pech used to say that they had been fortunate enough to get an exceptionally honorable unit. They wanted to pay for everything, but they didn’t have any money. And you could see that they were hungry: at the very sight—at the very scent—of sausage they started shaking. No wonder—come war, come occupation, we always had sausage. One had a Turkmen kilim or a Kyrgyz carpet strapped to his saddle, or perhaps a Persian rug, in any case an amazing fabric in a pagan design. But it was out of the question, he wouldn’t give it up. He jabbers something feverishly, you could guess that he wants to get to Berlin with it, but probably not in order to hoist a colorful banner on the Brandenburg Gate, rather in order to return from Berlin with this treasure to Alma Ata, or God knows where. It was out of the question, he wouldn’t give it up, he wouldn’t give it up for any sausage. He wouldn’t give it up for anything. Not for anything in the world. Grandpa went off to his hiding place and returns with two quart bottles of moonshine. The moonshine has the same color as Mila’s prewar pepper vodka. The comparison means nothing to the stubborn Bolshevik, and he continues to shake his head no, although no longer with the same conviction. But his buddies, unusually honorable Soviet soldaty, were in favor of the transaction. They attacked him furiously. It was as if the horses had caught the smell, they began to snort. Finally, the kamandir himself issued a prikaz: let there be a strengthening in Polish-Soviet trade relations. And so there was. They each got a ring of sausage all the same. They ate, they drank, and off they went. And the marble countertops, tree stump, scales, hooks, and gigantic ax slowly began to sink to the bottom.
VI
The older Brannys, one after the other—it was still during the German occupation—died of distress, in other words, a natural death. “Mother supposedly heard that there was a knock, once, twice. I didn’t hear anything,” Grandpa Pech’s blood didn’t yet boil on account of the signs that were constantly coming to Mother, but he was already jealous of them. In accepting the fact that one amazing miracle had occurred in his life, and not expecting any further miracles, not even small ones, he had probably committed an error. He didn’t lose faith in God, but it is not so much faith as life itself—if it is not strengthened by signs—that weakens. “I don’t need any divine rumblings. Mother hears all the rumbling of this world and the next for me,” he repeated with with a sneer, although in the word “Mother” there was the least amount of sneering. Liberated from the majority of the local customs, he was liberated from the dreadfully suicidal constant “Mother-ing” only by his intonation, but in my Lutheran parts even that is quite a lot.
They had four children, one died. Depraved by her excessive caresses, the boy from the first marriage had barely finished school when he ran away from home and vanished like a stone in water. Mother must think about him from time to time. She doesn’t let on, but she thinks. How is he faring? What is he doing? Is he even alive? He must be, because if he had died, she would have heard a sign. A knocking. Usually at the window. The deceased mainly knock on the kitchen window. Old Lady Mary—three clear knocks on the pane. Uncle Paweł—the same thing. Old Man Trzmielowski—six strokes, precisely half a year before he died. Master Sztwiertnia—a clatter in the hallway. Adam Czyż—a clatter in the attic. One-eyed Mr. Nikandy—again on the pane. Pastor Morowy—a lightning bolt over the cemetery. Bandmaster Jan Potulnik—a knock on the wall. Sister Ewelina—on the ceiling. Ferdynand Pustówka—on the table. Uncle Ableger—for a very long time on the window pane. Emma Lunatyczka—lightly on the window sill. Wolfgang Kleist—a racket in the pantry.
Little by little there wouldn’t be a single square inch in the house where some deceased person hadn’t rapped. Thank God the Communists are in power, and there is peace and no turmoil, because if it were a time of war, pestilence, or earthquake, then all the dead people that Mother knew would have torn the house down with their knocking alone. Even the baby, who died a couple days old, managed to stop the clock after its death. Her other three children throve. One son became a lawyer, the other a fitter, the girl a doctor. But they made tragic marriages. One to a spineless sataness, the other to a woman with no mind, the son-in-law in Krakow joined the Party.
They all always gathered for the holidays, but the true time of joy, of rejoicing, would arise when they departed. Finally you could hear the ticking of the clocks. All five. One in the ice house, one in the back room, one in the entrance, one in the kitchen, and also t
he cuckoo clock in the hallway. An ambition, unclear at first, that all of them strike simultaneously gradually turned into a maniacal obsession. He would grab the round stool standing next to the sewing machine, holding it like a four-legged pike set upright, carry it before him, place it forcefully under one clock after the other, climb up to the high mechanisms—not without quiet curses—and work for hours on their coordination. It often seemed that Grandpa Pech, standing on the stool, had become paralyzed, his arms stretched out to each subsequent clock face, and that he would remain in that pose for the ages. And, in fact, he did spend whole ages minding the clock hands and listening to the ticking, and he would freeze in the hope that all the bells would ring out in unison at last, and he never managed it.
Sometimes, on a dark winter night, he would wake up and, numb with hope and fear, he would await the coming hour. When he heard five or six tolls it was all the worse, because it was time to get up right away. But when the eternally unsynchronized clocks rang two o’clock, or best of all midnight, he didn’t fault them for their irregularity. Sometimes even a shiver of delight would come over him: so much more time for sleeping until morning.
The five regularly wound clocks were like the breathing of the house. The dreadful offspring with their dreadful spouses and their even more dreadful progeny would depart after the holidays. The house became deserted and deadened, but it recovered its circulation, the mechanical hearts began to beat, the ticking crickets hidden in the corners regained their vigor, and that was good.